Fall color predictions are as elusive as the weather

Weather forecasters need satellites, radar, Doppler equipment and all sorts of other gizmos and doodads to predict the weather. Although these talented and highly trained professionals do their best, the complexities of weather patterns make it difficult to predict more than a few days in advance.

Which brings me to this proclamation: Nobody and nothing can predict the weather months ahead. Not the wooly worms, not the frogs and crickets, not groundhogs and not the seeds of persimmons.

Last year, for example, I clipped out an article from this paper in which specific predictions were made on which days we'd have snow and the amounts, when we'd hit low temperatures and so on. After the eighth prediction proved wrong, I tore the article off my bulletin board and tossed it.

Why didn't any of the various farmers almanacs warn about the January 2009 ice storm? Or Hurricane Ike blowing into the Midwest? Or the Easter weekend freeze of 2007? Boy, I definitely would have appreciated a heads-up on any of those.

I'm often asked to predict what this year's fall color will be like. Usually, I won't try, because there's really no way to know.

(I told one insistent lady last year that the leaf color would be at its peak on Tuesday ... but I didn't know which Tuesday.)

However, I will go out on a limb (sorry about that) and make a generalized leaf prediction for the Evansville area this year: We will have fall leaf color, but it will be spotty, without large masses of trees in color at the same time; the leaves also will not last long on any tree.

I'm not basing this on caterpillar fur or cricket chirps, but by my knowledge of tree physiology, records of this past season's weather and what I'm seeing as I look out my window.

Because of the drought this year, trees are very stressed. The level of stress varies all over town, depending on the health of the tree going into the drought, soil conditions and other factors.

Three trees in one yard just down the block from my home illustrates my point. One tree is fully green; another is in full color; and the third has already dropped its leaves. I'm seeing this kind of variability everywhere.

From experience I know that stressed trees don't hold on tightly to their leaves.

Look for most of these leaves to drop with the first rain or heavy wind. If you're going to go out in the country to see the leaves, don't put it off too long.

To see what foliage conditions are like at destinations around the state, check out the "Leaf cam" on the VisitIndiana.com website.

For information on why leaves change color in the first place, contact the Purdue Extension Service at (812) 435-5287.

Larry Caplan is an extension educator-horticulture with the Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service, Vanderburgh County/Southwest Indiana. You can send e-mail to him at LCaplan@purdue.edu.